Physics Education

PAPER • OPEN ACCESS Related content

- Ready to learn physics: a team-based
‘The physics of life,’ an undergraduate general learning model for first year university
Maria Parappilly, Lisa Schmidt and
education biophysics course Samantha De Ritter

- Is the Universe mathematical?

Euan Squires
To cite this article: Raghuveer Parthasarathy 2015 Phys. Educ. 50 358
- P3: a practice focused learning
environment
Paul W Irving, Michael J Obsniuk and
Marcos D Caballero
View the article online for updates and enhancements.

Recent citations
- Guided inquiry activities for learning about
the macro- and micronutrients in
introductory nutrition courses
Andri L. Smith et al

This content was downloaded from IP address 180.244.169.169 on 17/10/2017 at 08:04

 Papers
iopscience.org/ped

‘The physics of life,’ an

undergraduate general education
biophysics course
Raghuveer Parthasarathy
Department of Physics, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1274, USA

E-mail: raghu@uoregon.edu

Abstract
Improving the scientific literacy of non-scientists is an important aim, both
because of the ever-increasing impact of science on our lives and because
understanding science enriches our experience of the natural world. One
route to improving scientific literacy is via general education undergraduate
courses—i.e. courses for students not majoring in the sciences or engineering.
Because it encompasses a variety of important scientific concepts,
demonstrates connections between basic science and real-world applications
and illustrates the creative ways in which scientific insights develop,
biophysics is a useful subject with which to promote scientific literacy.
I describe here a course on biophysics for non-science-major undergraduates
recently developed at the University of Oregon (Eugene, OR, USA), noting
its design, which spans both macroscopic and microscopic topics, and the
specific content of a few of its modules. I also describe evidence-based
pedagogical approaches adopted in teaching the course and aspects of course
enrollment and evaluation.

S Online supplementary data available from stacks.iop.org/PhysEd/50/358/mmedia

1. Introduction workings of nature, from the structure of stars

Few would disagree that fostering scientific lit-
eracy among the general public is a worthwhile
goal. We live in a world of increasing technologi-
cal complexity, and developments in biotechnol-
ogy, energy use, communications and many other
fields impact people’s lives in unprecedented
ways. Moreover, the advance of science has illu-
minated countless fascinating aspects of the inner
Content from this work may be used
under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work
must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the
work, journal citation and DOI.
to the interactions of genes. An understanding
of science opens the doors to an appreciation of
these insights.
There is widespread concern, however, that
the level of scientific literacy in contemporary
society is poor, within the United States [1–3] and
also globally [4], with respect to both basic sci-
entific knowledge and, more importantly, under-
standing of the nature of the scientific process.
One way to address this is via general education
undergraduate courses—i.e. courses intended for
students not majoring in the sciences or engineer-
ing—which in many cases provide these students’
last formal exposure to science. A variety of such

358  Physics Education  50 (3) © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd  0031-9120/15/030358+9$33.00

 ‘The physics of life,’ an undergraduate general education biophysics course
courses exist in the physics departments at many
universities, structured as overviews of wide
swathes of the subject, or forays into more spe-
cialized niches. I describe here a course on bio-
physics for non-science-major undergraduates,
titled ‘The physics of life,’ that I have recently
developed and taught at the University of Oregon.
Biophysics, I claim, is a particularly use-
ful vehicle for addressing scientific literacy. It
involves important and general scientific con-
cepts, demonstrates connections between basic
science and tangible phenomena related to health
and physiology, and illustrates how scientific
insights do not develop along predictable paths,
but rather often arise by the creative application
of perspectives and tools from disparate fields.
Moreover, it highlights the importance of physics
in biological research, a view increasingly real-
ized among biologists [5], but not by the general
public.
Here I describe the design of this ten week
course, the specific content of a few of its mod-
ules, its use of active learning and evidence-based
pedagogy, and aspects of its enrollment and eval-
uation. The aim of the article, in addition to doc-
umenting aspects of this course, is to hopefully
help seed similar classes elsewhere, or instances
in which biophysical concepts are incorporated
into other general education classes.
2.  Goals and topics
The course has three overarching goals: (1) to
help students learn how physical principles guide
and constrain life. This includes developing a
basic understanding of what the biomolecules and
biomaterials that make up organisms are and how
their physical properties and interactions govern
their function. (2) To improve students’ ability
to understand quantitative data and models. This
goal spans skills such as numerical estimation
and grasping the meaning of graphs, including
non-standard graphs such as log–log plots (e.g.
for biomechanical scaling relationships). (3) To
improve students’ comprehension of the process
by which scientific understanding develops. This
encompasses examples of the complex relation-
ships between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ science and
of the connections between seemingly disparate
fields of scientific study. Particular topics were
chosen to contribute to these goals and develop
May 2015
students’ scientific literacy. The course is part
of the University of Oregon’s Science Literacy
Program [6], which aims to help implement evi-
dence-based pedagogical methods across a range
of general education courses spanning several sci-
ence departments and to facilitate new classes and
new approaches to faculty and student training.
2.1.  Macroscopic topics
The ten week term is roughly divided into two
halves. The first covers macroscopic topics, with
a focus on scaling concepts, i.e. understanding
how various physical forces and biomechanical
properties scale with organism size and how this
influences the behaviour and physiology of ani-
mals and plants.
2.1.1.  Surface tension.  The first biological ques-
tion we address is why small insects can walk on
water, while humans cannot. This leads to the
concept of surface tension, introduced by dem-
onstrating a metal paper clip sitting atop a water
surface. The simple question, ‘Why does it stay
up?’ is a surprisingly difficult one to answer;
many students will state ‘surface tension,’ but
when probed will not be able to explain what
this means, leading to interesting conversations
on the inadequacy of simply naming phenomena
as compared to understanding the mechanisms
underlying them. We then discuss the nature of
liquids and how a consequence of intermolecular
attraction is a tendency to minimize surface area
and hence surface tension. There is, of course, a
force associated with surface tension, holding up
our paper clip against the force of gravity. What
geometric properties of the object should this
force depend on? With two objects of equal area,
but different edge lengths atop a bath of water
(figure 1), adding weights to each until they sink,
one can show quite simply that the shape with the
greater perimeter can support considerably more
weight and so has a larger surface tension force
associated with it. (It’s a surprisingly dramatic
demonstration; the students make guesses before-
hand and are almost breathless throughout the
slow addition of weights.) From this, we estab-
lish that the force associated with surface tension
scales with length and that, all things being equal,
an organism whose dimensions double would, at
a liquid surface, experience an upward force that
P h y s i c s E d u c at i o n 359
R Parthasarathy
Figure 1.  Two chopper wheels, with the same area but
different contact perimeters, are supported atop water
by surface tension. Adding weights to each one until
it sinks helps demonstrate that the force associated
with surface tension is dependent on perimeter, which
leads to an understanding of the scaling properties of
interfacial forces.
is twice as large. We also learn that the force of
gravity is proportional to the mass of an object
and hence scales as the cube of length, which
points to the answer to our original question: if
we imagine organisms growing in size, the force
of gravity increases much more than the force
that surface tension can provide. This difference
in scaling behaviour underlies differences in ani-
mal behaviour and explains why we don’t find
large animals walking on water. It also explains
why an individual fire ant, for example, can walk
on water due to surface tension but a raft of ants
cannot (which students are able to predict, based
on their improved physical understanding), which
leads ants agglomerating in flooding jungles to
trap air bubbles to harness the force of buoyancy
to keep themselves up, the subject of recent, fas-
cinating studies [7].
This leads simply to a topic of considerable
physiological importance: breathing. The surface
of the lungs is wet and so much of the work nec-
essary for breathing is work done against surface
tension. (For this reason it is easier to inflate lungs
with water than with air [8], which students are
surprised to learn.) Our lungs secrete, therefore,
a surfactant that lowers the surface tension of the
lungs and facilitates breathing. This surfactant is
produced rather late in gestation, however, around
week 30 and its absence leads to infant respira-
tory distress syndrome (IRDS), the leading cause
of death among premature infants. The mortality
rate from IRDS has dropped from about 25 000
deaths per year in the 1960s to less than 1000 in
2005 [9], due to the development of surfactant
treatments—in essence, injecting animal-based
360 P h y s i c s E d u c at i o n
or synthetic amphiphilic molecules into the lungs.
The connections between a basic physical con-
cept, a biological function and a real-world appli-
cation are rarely clearer than this.
Of course, the discussion of surface tension
above will seem trivial to most readers of this
journal. It serves a useful function in the course,
however, beyond being interesting and that is to
introduce scaling concepts. This takes a consider-
able amount of work—a statement as simple as
‘volume is proportional to length cubed’ is not
only foreign to most students but is remarkably
non-intuitive. In general, their own prior exposure
to geometry has been centered on memorizing
formulas for, for example, the volumes of vari-
ous shapes, rather than developing more expan-
sive notions of concepts like volume and area.
I describe later in this article various exercises
involving, for example, making log–log plots of
area and length for simple shapes and measuring
volumes of complex shapes, that build intuition
about geometric scaling relationships.
2.1.2. Biomechanics and scaling. We then
examine other issues of biomechanical scaling,
especially the question of why larger land ani-
mals need disproportionately thicker bones than
smaller ones. An elephant’s femur, for example, is
about 10 times longer than a small dog’s, but has
a diameter about 20 times greater. It is straight-
forward to illustrate this with images of bones;
alternatively, one can find real bones (figure 2).
Why are the bones so disproportionate? Again,
the scaling of different physical properties pro-
vides an explanation. The force of gravity is pro-
portional to mass and hence length cubed, while
the strength of bones, or beams in general, is pro-
portional to their cross-sectional area and hence
the square of length. (One could of course further
explore the continuum mechanics of bending and
make the preceding statement more accurate; we
do not in this course.) To avoid being crushed,
larger animals need disproportionately wider
bones. Notably, if the bone diameter scales as
length3/2, gravitational force and bone strength
follow one another; this is the case for ‘mechani-
cally similar’ animals. Following an example
from McMahon and Bonner [10], we examine
plots of bone dimensions for a wide range of
bovids (antelope, wildebeest, etc) and find that
this mechanical similarity holds, highlighting a
May 2015
 ‘The physics of life,’ an undergraduate general education biophysics course
Figure 2. An elephant femur helps illustrate the
biophysics of bone shape and attracts attention while
being carted through campus.
non-obvious shared characteristic of these diverse
animals. The topic of bone shape and scaling has
a long history, dating at least to Galileo [11] and
is compellingly discussed in a variety of books
(e.g. [10, 12]), discussed further below.
In addition to their relevance to animal form,
the biomechanical scaling ideas explored above
relate to contemporary issues of human health in
intriguing ways. The body mass index (BMI), for
example, postulates a person’s mass (M) divided
by height squared (h2) as a convenient and size-
invariant measure of obesity. If people of differ-
ent heights were the same shape (which is not the
case), one would expect m/h3 to be a useful meas-
ure. The BMI assumes a particular non-isometric
form, with m ∼ hp and p = 2. Do actual data on
masses and heights obey this? Strikingly, they do
not [13]; to the extent that there is power-law scal-
ing at all, p is roughly 2.6–2.7. The peculiarities
of the BMI, such as the inaccuracy of its obesity
implications for tall people, are familiar to many
students, which leads to interesting discussions of
why the measure exists and persists.
2.2.  Microscopic topics
The second half of the course covers microscopic
topics, especially the cellular and subcellular
phenomena that are the targets of most contem-
porary biophysical study. A key goal is to convey
an understanding of random, Brownian motion
and its importance. Students are used to seeing
cartoons or diagrams of biological processes and
from these form the mistaken impressions that
May 2015
these processes are more ordered and determin-
istic than they actually are and that small-scale
‘machines’ can be thought of simply as scaled-
down versions of macroscopic devices. Reality is,
of course, much different and seeing how dissimi-
lar from our familiar experience the microscopic
world is enhances our appreciation of it.
2.2.1.  Brownian motion.  We begin with observa-
tions, either with tabletop microscopes or previ-
ously recorded videos, of colloidal Brownian
motion, noting also its scientific history [14]. We
introduce the idea of a random walk. To charac-
terize this, rather than constructing an algebraic
derivation, we turn again to now-familiar tools
for uncovering scaling behaviour, plotting vari-
ous properties of random walks simulated in class
and finding, eventually, that the root mean square
distance traveled robustly scales as time0.5. This
non-linear scaling of distance and time, together
with a few numbers, explains why small cells,
like bacteria, can rely on simple random diffusion
to distribute material within them, while larger
eukaryotic cells must employ active, directed
mechanisms.
2.2.2. Biomolecules.  We explore the large-mol-
ecule components of cells, DNA, proteins and
lipids, examining especially how their physical
attributes are integral to their function. The con-
cept of self-assembly is central and we examine
how the combination of simple physical forces
and ubiquitous Brownian motion generates struc-
ture. Protein folding provides an important exam-
ple of this. Building on information about protein
sizes and prior exposure to the diffusivity of small
molecules, students can estimate the timescale
required for a chain of amino acids to explore
configuration space and adopt a shape. There are
numerous connections between this topic and
issues of contemporary interest, even beyond
the roles of particular proteins, for example the
computational challenges of predicting protein
folding outcomes [15] and the consequences of
misfolding in diseases such as mad cow disease
and Kuru [16]. (The latter, spread by cannibal-
ism, is particularly attention-grabbing.) Further
aspects of protein structure can be explored in
group projects, described below. Lipid mem-
branes provide still further opportunity to exam-
ine self-assembly, as well as enabling connections
P h y s i c s E d u c at i o n 361
R Parthasarathy
to earlier discussions of surface tension and to
contemporary research into the mechanical prop-
erties of these biological structures [17].
DNA is the most iconic biomolecule and we
examine some of the physics related to its role as
a conveyor of genetic information. The packaging
issues associated with DNA are easy to introduce.
We note that each of us have roughly one metre of
DNA in each of our roughly one-micron-diameter
cell nuclei. We ask: is this impressive? Since 1 m
is much larger than 1  µm, an obvious answer is
‘yes.’ However, we then ask for a simple estimate
of the volume of the nucleus, ∼ (10−6 m)3 and the
volume of the DNA,  ∼1  m  × (10−9  m)2, finding
that they are similar, so an equally straightforward
answer to our question is ‘no.’ Both responses are
inadequate, however. To answer meaningfully,
we must consider the mechanical properties of
DNA. A simple way to do so [18] that follows
naturally from earlier course topics is to model
DNA as a random walk of straight segments,
each of length equal to the molecule’s persistence
length, ≈50 nm. The characteristic size of such a
walk, or equivalently the size of a ‘blob’ of DNA
on its own, is about 200 µm, showing that its pack-
aging inside the nucleus is, indeed, impressive.
Physics highlights the remarkable challenges
involved in packing DNA and also illuminates
the tactics employed in response: DNA is highly
negatively charged and positively charged his-
tone complexes serve as spools on which DNA
is wound. The topic of DNA again connects with
issues of scaling and also links to contemporary
studies on, for example, the even denser packing
of DNA in many viruses [19] and the feedback
between DNA packaging and the genetic code
[20]. Moreover, it highlights the process of model
construction in science and leads to discussions
of the motivations, the limitations and the utility
of models.
2.3.  Other topics
The themes of the course offer abundant opportu-
nities for extensions and personalization of top-
ics, incorporating modern insights into entropy in
biomolecular systems, pattern formation, energy
flows, experimental tools and countless other
topics.
For example, in some terms we have explored
the fundamentally different ways in which large
362 P h y s i c s E d u c at i o n
and small organisms must propel themselves in
fluids, [21, 22], a topic that transcends the micro-
scopic and macroscopic divide. This again serves
to illustrate that many living creatures inhabit a
strange and alien world, at odds with the intui-
tion we develop as large animals in turbulent
surroundings.
3.  Components of the course
The non-standard subject matter of the course and
its audience of non-science-major undergradu-
ates, who are in general rather averse to mathe-
matics, present challenges for teaching that I have
attempted to address through the development of
a variety of course materials and activities.
Most class sessions involve a small amount
of time spent lecturing, with the considerable
majority of the period devoted to active learning
in one of several forms. In general, the benefits of
active learning methods on student performance
are increasingly well appreciated for introduc-
tory courses for science majors [23, 24]. For gen-
eral education courses this has been much less
explored, but I would argue that active learning is
even more important in this context. Engagement
with the material is critical and since the students
in general are less interested in science than are
science majors, reliance on passive absorption of
new concepts and techniques is not very effective.
In addition, students are often trained by prior
experiences to believe that they are incapable of
scientific inquiry. Making a large fraction of the
course require the construction of questions, dis-
cussion with peers and other activities not only
helps address this, but does so in a way that makes
it clear that this way of learning is the expected
norm for the course.
The most significant tools to aid active learn-
ing that we have employed are ‘clicker’-based
questions about scientific concepts, graphs, or
in-class demonstrations [25] and in-class work-
sheets. I have found the worksheets to be highly
effective. In these, particular lessons are broken
down into a series of questions and discussion top-
ics that students work on in small groups, while
teaching assistants and I walk through the class
offering advice and asking questions. After most
groups have answered a few of the questions, or
if many groups are stuck, we all reconvene to go
over the topic. For example, our worksheet on
May 2015
 ‘The physics of life,’ an undergraduate general education biophysics course
the physics underlying bone dimensions began
with an exercise plotting bone length and diam-
eter on a logarithmic graph, asked students to
sketch graphs that would correspond to isomet-
ric- and mechanically-similar scaling, continued
with further questions and finally concluded with
a question that encapsulates these concepts and
leads to discussion: ‘Why can’t elephants jump?’
(A few sample worksheets are provided as sup-
plementary materials to this paper (stacks.iop.org/
PhysEd/50/358/mmedia).)
There is no textbook that spans the range of
subjects described above. Assigned readings of
excerpts from Steven Vogel’s excellent books on
biomechanics, especially Life’s Devices [12] and
McMahon and Bonner’s On Size and Life [10], are
useful for the macroscopic half of the term. (The
two named books also inspired the creation of the
course.) John Tyler Bonner’s Why Size Matters:
From Bacteria to Blue Whales [26], D’Arcy
Thompson’s classic On Growth and Form [27],
Haldane’s well known essay On Being the Right
Size [29] and McNeill Alexander’s The Human
Machine [30] contain innumerable inspiring mor-
phological discussions. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes’
and Jacques Badoz’ Fragile Objects: Soft Matter,
Hard Science and the Thrill of Discovery [28] is
a popular book on soft materials and their phys-
ics that helps provide useful insights into the
behaviour of biological soft matter; de Gennes
Nobel-prize winning work on polymer physics
is deeply connected to the properties of macro-
molecules explored in class. I have supplemented
excerpts from books with short articles from
Scientific American [31, 8], Physics Today and
other sources, as well as materials I wrote myself.
The microscopic half of the course relies much
more on readings I have written and brief excerpts
from the publicly available Molecular Biology of
the Cell textbook [32]. A list of assigned readings
is supplied as supplementary material (stacks.iop.
org/PhysEd/50/358/mmedia). More than half of
the class sessions had an assigned prior reading,
with a short quiz on its contents at the start of the
period.
In addition to readings directly related to
class topics, students were given three assign-
ments, to be completed in small groups, in which
they read and responded to ‘popular science’ arti-
cles from The New York Times, The Economist
and other sources. These dealt with subjects that
May 2015
intersected with those covered in class, for exam-
ple on scaling relationships claimed to be obeyed
by cities, the creation of synthetic nucleotides
for DNA, etc. For each article chosen, students
were directed to briefly summarize the article,
especially the scientific motivations of the work
described; to ask one ‘quantitative’ question that
was not presented in the article or suggest some-
thing that could be graphed that would be insight-
ful; and to comment on relationships between the
article and in-class topics. Especially since the
students in the class are non-science majors, their
interaction with science in the future is likely to
be largely via popular media of various sorts and
so developing practice with thoughtfully examin-
ing popular articles is valuable.
We also use more standard assignments and
assessments: weekly homework assignments
and exams. These focus especially on conceptual
understanding of the material and order-of-mag-
nitude numerical estimates. The latter, widely
known as Fermi problems, provide powerful
yet easily obtained insights into a wide variety
of systems and also serve to illuminate what
assumptions or inputs are essential to under-
standing a problem. A few sample conceptual
questions are provided as supplementary mate-
rials to this paper (stacks.iop.org/PhysEd/50/358/
mmedia).
The course has also incorporated a final pro-
ject in which students, in groups, research some
protein with the goal of explaining the relation-
ship between its structure and function. In addi-
tion, students also 3D printed a physical model of
their protein and compared the usefulness of this
visualization with computational rendering (using
the widely used PyMol software). (Interestingly,
nearly everyone preferred, overall, the computa-
tional illustration.) One could easily imagine a
greater focus in the course on scientific visualiza-
tion methods.
4.  Challenges and outcomes
‘The physics of life’ has been offered at the
University of Oregon four times since 2011, each
time with an enrollment of about 60. As intended,
students represented many different majors (45)
and the majority (78%) were not science majors.
There has been a roughly 2 : 1 ratio of social sci-
ence to humanities majors. Of students in the
P h y s i c s E d u c at i o n 363
R Parthasarathy
natural sciences, the largest contingent (48%)
were psychology majors and 10% (3% of the
total students) were physics majors. The course,
therefore, succeeded in its aim of reaching a large
number of students not pursuing degrees in the
sciences.
Student reaction to the course and subject
matter has been enthusiastic. In written end-of-
term comments, many students have noted the
‘incredibly interesting and diverse’ topics and
have ‘enjoyed how the material we were learn-
ing about related to our everyday lives.’ The
University of Oregon Science Literacy Program
has been surveying attitudes toward and percep-
tions of science among students in this and other
courses; the results will be documented in the
near future. Course evaluations, which tabulate
responses to a standard set of university-wide
questions, do not provide a meaningful measure
of student learning, but are unfortunately the
only tool available for inter-course comparisons.
Evaluation scores for ‘The physics of life’ are
slightly higher than average for general-educa-
tion courses offered by the University of Oregon
Physics Department (‘The physics of light and
color,’ ‘The physics of sound and music,’ and
several others). In the evaluation category of
overall course quality, for example, the most
recent evaluation score was 4.1 out of 5.0, with
the departmental mean and standard deviation
for the last 76 general-education courses taught
being 3.9 ± 0.3. Though the course is in general
well liked, it presents challenges for students.
Many find the mathematical concepts introduced
in it difficult.
Though nominally simpler than the basic
skills in algebra they all have, techniques such
as numerical estimation, adeptness with expo-
nents, etc, move beyond their prior habituation
with rote memorization of formulae and require
developing a deeper understanding of quantita-
tive perspectives that is non-trivial. For example:
via discussion as well as a ‘diagnostic’ math quiz
during the first week of the term, it is apparent
that the considerable majority of students will
correctly respond with xa + b when asked what xa
xb is. However, a much smaller fraction (∼ 25%),
when asked a question like ‘if y is proportional
to x3, and x doubles, what happens to y?,’ will
answer correctly. The former question involves,
in most students’ experience, memorization of
364 P h y s i c s E d u c at i o n
a rule about manipulating symbols; the latter
involves an understanding of what exponents
mean. Addressing this, while rewarding and ulti-
mately satisfying, takes time. We do a variety of
exercises that build from seemingly trivial begin-
nings, tabulating the volumes and surfaces areas
of simple geometric shapes and plotting them
versus linear dimensions on logarithmic axes and
measuring the volumes and masses of isometric
(same-shape) objects like bolts, establishing how
to think about non-linear relationships and real-
izing for example that volume is more than the
outcome of formulas about shape, but rather that
property of space that scales as length cubed.
The tangibility of the topics explored in
the course, i.e. their applicability to the every-
day world of animals and plants, helps students
engage with physical concepts. Moreover, con-
nections between the course and physiologi-
cal relevance are particularly valuable, helping
to stimulate interest and appreciation. It is not
uncommon for students to have personal expe-
rience, for example via family members, with
diseases that connect to biophysical properties.
(pre-term births, cystic fibrosis and cancer have
all come up in the course.) Along similar lines,
the course serves to illustrate the importance of
non-genetic ‘information’ in orchestrating life, a
message of particular contemporary importance
given the tendency of popular media to convey
the impression that genes are the sole driv-
ers of function, that there is a gene ‘for’ every
attribute of health or disease. There is, students
learn, no gene that directs lipids into a bilayer, or
that ferries neurotransmitters across a chemical
synapse; in these and countless other cases, the
physical forces and interactions of biomolecules
govern and constrain their behaviour, a perspec-
tive that is important to convey.
I will also note that the course is very
enjoyable to teach. Being a biophysicist, I am,
of course, biased, but having taught various
other general education courses in recent years,
it is apparent that the variety of the subject mat-
ter, its connections to the living world around
us and the contemporary excitement of the field
of biophysics all make a general education bio-
physics course a deeply satisfying and intel-
lectually exciting vehicle with which to convey
the message of scientific literacy to a general
population.
May 2015
 ‘The physics of life,’ an undergraduate general education biophysics course
Acknowledgments
The development and implementation of this
course have benefitted enormously from its affili-
ation with the University of Oregon Science Liter-
acy Program (SLP) [7], launched with a grant from
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (grant no.
52006956, Science Education Division) and also
supported by funds from the University of Oregon.
I also gratefully acknowledge input and insights
from E Vandegrift (associate director of the SLP),
J Mueller (Univ. of Oregon Teaching Effectiveness
Program), Professor E Corwin (who taught one
term of Physics 171), graduate student assistants L
Van Ryswyk, M Jemielita, T Hormel, R Baker, K
Lynch-Klarup, S Logan and undergraduate student
assistants K Nyberg and R Holton. Undergradu-
ate assistants were upper-division science major
supported by the SLP to develop their teaching
and communication skills and to help implement
active-learning activities in class. Many of the
graduate student assistants were wholly or partially
supported by SLP. I also thank Professor Edward
Davis and the Univ. of Oregon Museum of Natu-
ral and Cultural History for access to animal bones
and S Vogel and J T Bonner for comments on an
earlier version of this manuscript.
Received 6 October 2014, in final form 7 December 2014,
accepted for publication 18 February 2015
doi:10.1088/0031-9120/50/3/358
References
[1] Pew Research Center 2013 Public’s
Knowledge of Science and Technology
www.people-press.org/2013/04/22/
publics-knowledge-of-science-and-technology/
[2] Miller J D 2004 Public understanding of and
attitudes toward, scientific research: what
we know and what we need to know Public
Underst. Sci. 13 273–94
[3] Gross L 2006 Scientific illiteracy and the partisan
takeover of biology PLoS Biol. 4 E167
[4] Bybee R, McCrae B and Laurie R 2009 PISA
2006: an assessment of scientific literacy J.
Res. Sci. Teach. 46 865–83
[5] American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS) 2010 Vision and Change: a
Call to Action (Washington, DC: AAAS)
[6] http://scilit.uoregon.edu/
[7] Mlot N J, Tovey C A and Hu D L 2011 Fire
ants self-assemble into waterproof rafts
to survive floods Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA
108 7669–73
May 2015
[8] Clements J A 1962 Surface tension in the lungs
Sci. Am. 207 120–30
[9] Schraufnagel D 2010 Breathing in America:
Diseases, Progress and Hope 1st edn
(New York: American Thoracic
Society)
[10] McMahon T A and Bonner J T 1983 On Size
and Life (New York: Scientific American
Library)
[11] Galilei G 2010 Dialogues Concerning
Two New Sciences (New York: Cosimo
Classics)
[12] Vogel S 1988 Life’s Devices: the Physical
World of Animals and Plants (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press)
[13] Korevaar N J 2003 www.math.utah.
edu/~korevaar/ACCESS2003/bmi.pdf
[14] Mazo R M 2002 Brownian Motion:
Fluctuations, Dynamics and Applications
(Oxford: Clarendon)
[15] Dill K A and MacCallum J L 2012 The protein-
folding problem, 50 years on Science
338 1042–6
[16] Pruisner S B 1995 The prion diseases Sci. Am.
272 48–57
[17] Parthasarathy R and Groves J T 2007 Curvature
and spatial organization in biological
membranes Soft Matter 3 24–33
[18] Phillips R, Kondev J and Theriot J 2008 Physical
Biology of the Cell (New York: Garland
Science)
[19] Evilevitch A, Lavelle L, Knobler C M,
Raspaud E and Gelbart W M 2003 Osmotic
pressure inhibition of DNA ejection from
phage Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA
100 9292–5
[20] Segal E et al 2006 A genomic code for
nucleosome positioning Nature
442 772–8
[21] Purcell E M 1977 Life at low Reynolds number
Am. J. Phys. 45 3–11
[22] Vogel S 1996 Life in Moving Fluids: the
Physical Biology of Flow 2nd revised edn
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press)
[23] Freeman S et al 2014 Active learning increases
student performance in science, engineering
and mathematics Proc. Natl Acad. Sci.
111 8410–5
[24] Smith M K et al 2009 Why peer discussion
improves student performance on in-class
concept questions Science 323 122–4
[25] Beatty I D, Gerace W J, Leonard W J and
Dufresne R J 2006 Designing effective
questions for classroom response system
teaching Am. J. Phys. 74 31–9
[26] Bonner J T 2006 Why Size Matters: from
Bacteria to Blue Whales (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press)
[27] Thompson D W 1942 On Growth and Form
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
P h y s i c s E d u c at i o n 365
R Parthasarathy
[28] de Gennes P-G and Badoz J 1996 Fragile
Objects: Soft Matter, Hard Science and the
Thrill of Discovery (New York: Springer)
[29] Haldane J B S 1985 On Being the Right Size and
Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
[30] Alexander R M 1992 The Human Machine (New
York: Columbia University Press)
[31] Basu S 2007 Robots that walk on water Sci. Am.
(available at www.scientificamerican.com/
article/robots-that-walk-on-water/)
[32] Alberts B et al 2002 Molecular Biology of
the Cell 4th edn (New York: Garland
Publishing) (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/
NBK21054/)
366 P h y s i c s E d u c at i o n
Raghuveer Parthasarathy is a
physics professor at the University of
Oregon in the US. His research lab
explores the mechanics of cellular
membranes and the early development
of animals and their resident microbes,
often by constructing new optical
tools that make possible visualization
of biophysical phenomena and the interplay between
structure and dynamics. His teaching focuses on courses
for non-science-major undergraduates, aiming to convey an
appreciation for the frontiers of science and an understanding
of the scientific process.
May 2015